AGM extras

Great blogging from Ken last Friday at the AGM using his iPad2.
Another great AGM with HY able to confidently (but with no arrogance at all) reassure investors they are in one of the world's great technology companies, with huge growth to come.
Once again the event was superbly organised and hosted by Susi Barrett and her team. The directors, management team and CEO made themselves freely available to ordinary Joe's like us.

Some key points follow, to the best of my recollection:

- now IMG is known as a 'silicon, software and cloud IP supplier' - the cloud activities will start with Pure
- the 'smartphones and tablets'  aspect of the business is 'recession proof'.
- cycle time reduced to 1 year from 3, thanks to Apple
- 'expect to see big things with Nokia on the back of Windows 8'
- whilst discussing tablet market 'we expect to be party to other key products' - there was a possible clue to Amazon in there (no confirmation)
- Smartphones will be approx 50% of the total phone market within 2 years, giving IMG a TAM of 700-800 million units in this sector alone.
- IMG are about 70% of the total mobile graphics market at present
- IMG currently have approx 50% of the Android volume. Qualcomm have about 30%.
- IMG do lots of business with Samsung and are always trying to sell more IP cores to them
- In the 'home' market (TV/STB/audio etc) 'cannot overemphasise design-win strength in this area'.
- 'we are in Google reference design for multiple generations for tablets' - a clear nod to ICS/OMAP 4
- Healthcare, smartpower and security will take us from 1Bn to many billion units.
- Current run-rate of IMG'd chips is rising to 30m/month
- Demand for the next generation graphics (Rogue) is 'immense', products are 2 years away. IMG can manage 6 lead licensees for now but many more will follow.
- re-iterated 'we don't give our stuff away for free' when mentioning a competitor's claims (Mali) about Mediatek
- the 245m chip volume for 10/11 was from 48 SoCs - 67 SoCs are in design/prototype
- the 500m target was 'too close'
- big rise in Home Consumer SoCs (30) - clearly lots of deals have been done in this space but we are not privy to the names involved. We are on TV brands other than Sony but no names given.
- Regarding Hellosoft there have been multiple agreements with 'significant operators and handset OEMs' - perhaps a clue to Verizon in there. HY has met more operators in past 6 months than in his whole life.
- Regarding Caustic - very strong patents - can do 'magic stuff' when you add ray-tracing to Rogue - will help console makers differentiate from other games devices (phone/tablets etc). Will also help games developers cut costs by up to 90% ! The Caustic demo was astonishing.
- No risk of losing the really important partners - 'we are central to their platform' - Apple, Intel, Google.
- We have the best technology performance per square mm and per mW -  Intel, Apple, Sony etc would not use us if this was not true. We have to 'scale' with these type of partners. When the decision is based on technology alone (ie. no politics etc) then IMG always wins.
- GPU adoption - we are only 20% along the curve (at 200m)
- in 10/11 40% of our shipments had video core inside.
- PURE/DAB+  Germany rollout starts in September, doubles our potential market. Pure would be very profitable if all the expenses/RD did not get loaded onto it.
- Licensing 'interest couldn't be better'
- ASP expected to remain @ 27c/chip this FY.
- 'would like to see IMG as a FTSE 100 company' and 'put UK on the map'.

Good luck to all fellow Imagineers.